This invention relates to apparatus for automatically testing electromechanical device drive circuitry to verify the proper operation thereof, and more particularly to such apparatus as could be used, for example, in a combustion supervisory control system to test the circuit breaker used to conclude a combustion process in the event of faulty control circuit operation.
There are a large number of industrial endeavors which employ high energy combustion processes. For efficiency and safety, automatic control systems are often used to initiate and supervise the combustion processes. These combustion supervisory control systems automatically control the supply of fuel and oxidizer to a burner, as well as the initial purging and ignition of the burner upon start up, and shut down of the burner in the event of a flame-out or of a fault in the supervisory control system.
The shut down of the burner and the combustion process in the event of a combustion or equipment failure may be accomplished by a snap-action circuit breaker, where the circuit breaker may be reset only manually. Opening of the circuit breaker would essentially disable the combustion process, and produce a safe shut down of the system.
It would clearly be desirable to provide some means for testing the operation of such a circuit breaker shut down method. One manner of accomplishing this would be to induce a fault condition and observe whether or not the circuit breaker did in fact actuate in response to this fault condition. To do this requires the cooperation of the operator, however, since the circuit breaker is only manually resettable. It would be preferable if some fashion could be devised for instead performing this automatically.